The Dark of Summer

by Dean R. Koontz

  “And there's no other cove or bay, besides these two, that's closer to your lobster beds?”

  “None,” he said. “The coast here is rugged, but it's very short of well-sheltered backwaters where a thirty-five-foot fishing boat could weather a good blast in safety.”

  “Perhaps if I talked to Uncle Will, he—”

  “Would feed you some unlikely story that, because you love him, you'd believe.”

  “Do I look stupid?” she asked, rather hotly, rising to her feet.

  “No, but you look trusting — far, far too trusting.”

  “I'll ask him, anyway,” Gwyn said.

  He stood up too.

  She sensed a new tension between them, an antagonism that she did not want, but which, right now, was unavoidable.

  He said, “There are new rumors floating in Calder.”

  “About my uncle?”

  He nodded. “They say he is negotiating to buy up the land around Jenkins' Niche. If he purchases that and locks us out again, we'll have to go at least three miles farther south to find another base of operations. And that will be worse than Jenkins' Niche. To find a good place, we'll have to go five miles — which will put us intolerably far away from our beds. We can't keep the lobster catch out of the water for as long as it would take to transport them that far.”

  “I'm sure Uncle Will won't be unreasonable,” she said.

  “You're more optimistic than I am.”

  “He must have had a reason, no matter how it looks to you, for closing down Lamplight Cove.”

  He sighed. “If you ever do talk to him about this—”

  “Not if, when,” she said.

  “When you talk to him about this,” he said, “maybe you better tell him that the fishermen aren't going to put up with another move, not a move like this one would be.”

  “Is that a threat?” she asked.

  “Call it what you will.”

  He splashed to the rear of the old boat. Without looking up at her again, he wrestled it free of the sand and guided it around in the swirling water. He pushed it out a few yards, hopped into it and started the engine. Putting only the tips of the blades into the shallow water, he moved cautiously toward deeper channels. When he dropped the engine down completely, he roared away in a wake of white water, soon out of sight.

  FIVE

  Gwyn waited until dinner was finished before she brought up the subject of the lobster fishermen. When the three of them had retired to the easy chairs in the library and had begun to mellow the effects of the dinner with tiny glasses of sweet banana liqueur, she said, “Well, I met Jack Younger this afternoon.”

  Elaine sat up straight in her chair, her shoulders suddenly gone stiff, her face lined with concern and less young than it usually appeared. “Has that old scoundrel been hanging around here again?” she asked, quite evidently perturbed.

  “He's been warned by the sheriff,” Will said, as stiff and ill-at-ease as his wife. “He's not to harass us any more, and he knows it. What did he want?”

  “You misunderstand,” Gwyn said. “Not that Jack Younger.” She smiled to herself as she remembered the comic routine about his name which Jack had gone through when they met on the beach. To her aunt and uncle, she said, “That's his father. I met the — younger Younger.”

  “Even so, he's no right coming around here,” Elaine said. She was more distressed than the situation seemed to warrant.

  “Well, he wasn't around the mansion,” Gwyn explained. “I went for a swim, as I said — and then for a walk along the beach.” Modest, she decided to underplay the reason for their meeting. “We met — by accident, south of here about a mile.”

  “And what did he have to say?” her Uncle Will asked. Although he had settled back into his easy chair and had crossed his legs once more, he appeared to be still ill-at-ease, strained like a rubber band. He ran one long-fingered hand through his silvered hair, over and over again, unconscious of this betrayal of his frayed nerves. But what did he have to be so awfully nervous about?

  “He just wanted to chat,” Gwyn said. “He didn't know, at first, that I was your niece.”

  “What'd he have to say when he found out that you were?” Elaine asked. She, too, had leaned back in her chair — and she, too, was strained almost to the breaking point.

  “For one thing,” Gwyn said, “he talked a lot about a place called Lamplight Cove.”

  Neither Will nor Elaine had anything to say about that. They seemed to be fighting an urge to glance at each other for reassurance.

  Gwyn put her glass down on the stand beside her chair and turned to her uncle. “Is it really true, what he says?”

  “What's he say?” Will asked.

  “That you've been making life very hard for the lobster fishermen hereabouts. He says you bought Lamplight Cove out from under them, and even though you haven't done anything with it yourself, you refuse to let them rent their old facilities.”

  “A rather nicely twisted version of the truth,” her uncle said. He seemed to have recovered all of his normal self-assurance.

  “Is it? I suspected it might be, but he sounded so — honest.”

  He put down his own liqueur and folded his hands together on his upraised knee. He said, “It's true enough that I've bought Lamplight Cove, and that I haven't done much of anything with the place — yet. The Cove is seven hundred yards across and contains more than a thousand yards of beach frontage property, which will develop nicely. I intend, in the near future, to establish generous, expensive homesites for discriminating people — just as I also intend to do with all the other land that I've bought up along this section of the coast during the past six or seven years. Eventually, this area will contain some of the most exclusive and lovely homes in all of America…” His voice lifted as he spoke of the project; clearly, he was sure of a large financial success.

  “In the meantime,” Gwyn began.

  He did not permit her to finish, but went on as if he had not even heard her speak. He said, “As soon as I acquired Lamplight Cove, I offered the fishermen the facilities there at the same rental they had always paid. Which, I might add, was precious little; the buildings were shoddy, the commercial value of them almost nil. But I did not throw them out — not as they now attempt to say I did. After all, I am a businessman, Gwyn, and I would not turn down any income so easy — no matter that it's small — as that which the dock rentals would have brought. However, included in my agreement to rent to them were several — ah, conditions.”

  “Conditions?”

  “They had spoiled the environment of Lamplight Cove and were well on the way toward recklessly destroying it altogether. They dumped their sludge oil from their boats right into the bay. They'd also established a complete dry dock, to paint and repair their boats, and they weren't at all concerned that so much of the poisonous products used in these repairs — scaled paint, new paint, turpentine, grease, oil, solvents — were let into the waters of the cove. You see, since they didn't live here, and since they didn't have to earn their living fishing in the cove, they didn't really much care what condition they left the place in. They didn't care whether or not they were killing off all of the underwater plant and animal life in the cove.”

  “How terrible,” Gwyn said.

  “But par, for most people,” he said.

  She said, “Jack Younger never told me any of this.”

  Elaine, in a tone of voice that made it perfectly clear she thought very little of any of the Youngers or their friends, said, “Well, my dear, I'd have been very must surprised if he had. These people show an amazing skill for twisting the truth.”

  Her Uncle William said, “They've tried to make me out as a villain to everyone in the area. They've painted me as a vicious man, a money-grubbing, ruthless and pettily vindictive rich man discriminating against the poor, down-trodden laborers. You'd think I was an ogre if you heard only their side of things. But nothing's so simple as that.”

  “I told him that h
e was wrong about you, Uncle Will,” Gwyn said.

  He smiled. He took a sip of the banana liqueur, then put the glass down once again. “Thank you for your loyalty,” he said.

  “It's nothing to do with loyalty,” Gwyn said. “It's just plain, common sense. You couldn't possibly be so mean and petty as he said you were. No one could be.”

  “I'll wager that he didn't tell you anything about International Seafood Products, either.”

  She looked perplexed.

  “It's a huge concern that processes seafood and cans it. ISP has been trying to buy up seafront land and obtain government permissions to construct a fish processing factory only a mile from here. Do you realize what a plant like that would mean to this area?”

  “More jobs?” Gwyn ventured.

  He snorted.

  “Actually, they'd employ very few people,” Elaine said. “The plant would be ninety percent automated.”

  Her Uncle William leaned forward again, as if engaged in a vital argument about the affairs of the day — which, she soon saw, he was. “In point of fact,” he said, “such a processing factory would ruin Calder and the landside around it. Have you ever been anywhere near a seafood plant, a cannery?”

  “No,” Gwyn admitted.

  “The stench of dead and rotting fish — the guts, and other parts they can't use — carries for miles. The sea around the plant is used as a dumping grounds for organic and inorganic wastes, in huge quantities. You have an open sewer, within six months, and another dead section of the sea in a year.”

  “And the lobster fishermen have been in favor of this cannery?” Gwyn asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “Not just the lobster men, but all the captains. Because their own traditional grounds are so close, they'd be able to make a better profit on their catches. Add, of course, they'd have a steady market for just about everything they could bring in.”

  Gwyn nodded. “I see.”

  “Don't misunderstand,” Elaine said. “We're not against progress, and we're certainly not against capitalism. The seafood company should be allowed to build their plant somewhere. One of the offshore islands, north of here, would do nicely — someplace where there aren't people whose lives and property values would be lessened by such a godawful factory.”

  “I'll admit,” her uncle said, “that one of my reasons for wanting to keep ISP out of Calder and the surrounding area is purely monetary. I've spent half a decade acquiring the land necessary to establish a fine seaside community of upper-class homes. I wouldn't want to see the value on all that land be cut by half because of the stench of rotting fish. But beyond this consideration, there's the other, of environmental protection. I don't want to live in a place where a good, deep breath makes me ill — or where the beaches are littered with decaying rejects from the cannery.”

  “Neither would I,” Gwyn said.

  “So,” Elaine said, “if you should see this Mr. Younger again, you'll be able to tell just how much of his line is pure hogwash.”

  “Actually,” Will said, “I'd think it better if you don't see him again. If you notice him on the beach, avoid him. These people have made some threats — of violence, I'd feel safer if you avoided them.”

  She promised that she would keep to herself, though she knew that she would take any opportunity to speak, just one more time, with Mr. Jack Younger (the younger). He had departed, this afternoon, with such a cold, abrupt attitude… He had made her feel guilty. Now, she would enjoy letting him know that she had found out exactly who the real villains were in this affair.

  On the stairs, when she was on her way to her room, she met Ben Groves coming the opposite direction.

  “It looks great,” he said.

  Confused, she said, “What does?”

  “Your tan!”

  She looked at her bare arms and smiled. “I'd almost forgotten it. Yes, it's rather good, but just a start. I want to be as dark as everyone else around here, before the summer's over. At least, now, I don't look like a — ghost.”

  After some additional smalltalk, he said, “How about going sailing with me tomorrow?”

  “You've got a boat?”

  “A fourteen-foot beauty,” he said, grinning. “I keep her moored in Calder. Tomorrow's my day off, so…”

  “I'd love to,” she said.

  “Be up and ready to go at nine,” he said.

  “Aye, aye, Skipper.”

  “But leave the corny sea talk behind,” he said.

  “Right, Cap'n,” she said, with a mock salute.

  “Gwyn?”

  She sat straight up in bed.

  Her hands were full of twisted sheets.

  She was perspiring.

  Tense, leaning forward as if she had just been hit in the stomach, she listened intently.

  “Gwyn?”

  She got up, without turning on any light, trying to be as silent as possible, moving like — like a ghost.

  She stood in the center of the room, weakly illuminated by the remnants of the moon, and she looked around, trying to catch sight of any stranger, any shadow darker or lighter than the ones the furniture threw.

  She saw nothing.

  “Gwyn…”

  This was no dream. Someone was most definitely calling out to her in a dry, whispery voice.

  She walked cautiously to the door, reached for it, found that it was open.

  She stepped into the corridor.

  Tonight, as the moon waned, there was insufficient moonlight for her to tell whether or not the hallway was deserted. She might have been alone — or she might have been one of a half a dozen people standing there in the darkness.

  Holding the door frame, one hand to her heart as if to still the rapid beating she listened.

  She waited.

  Time passed like syrup running sluggishly out of a narrow-mouthed bottle, drip by drip by drip…

  The voice did not come again.

  She willed it to return.

  It did not.

  In a whisper of her own, hoping she would not wake anyone else, Gwyn said, “What do you want?”

  She received no reply.

  “What do you want with me?”

  Nothing.

  “Ginny?”

  Silence.

  She walked the length of the corridor, first to the right of her room, and then to the left, moving on tiptoe, expecting to bump into someone — or something — at any moment. She encountered no one and nothing at all.

  She stood in her doorway a while longer, listening, then went into her room again and closed the door.

  With her back to the heavy door, both moist palms pressed flat against the cool, slick, varnished wood, she cleared her throat softly and, still whispering, she said, “Ginny, are you here?”

  She felt like an utter fool, but when she received no answer, she repeated the question: “Ginny, are you here?”

  Only silence…

  And darkness.

  Ben Groves, in that so-reasonable voice of his, had told her that everyone should keep an open mind on everything — even about ghosts and netherworld visitors. He had convinced her. But now, it seemed stupid for her to stand around in the dark, in her nightgown, talking to the air and waiting for a supernatural reply. She had never been one for astrology, for belief in anything beyond the human ken.

  “It was a dream,” she said. “A repetitious dream.”

  Then she remembered that the door had been standing wide open, and that she had most certainly closed it when she came to bed…

  She tugged at it now, without twisting the knob, and she saw that the latch was slightly loose. Perhaps, because the door did lean slightly inward, it had slipped its latch during the night, all by itself, and had gradually drifted open. She'd had a dormitory room at college with a door that did that very same thing. In any event, it was easier to accept a mundane explanation like that than to put any credence in the existence of ghosts!

  She got a drink of cold tapwater from the bathroom, let it sooth
e her parched throat, then returned to bed.

  In a while, she slept again.

  She did not dream.

  Yet, in the morning, when she got up, she found that her door had drifted open again, during the night… She took this as proof that the latch needed to be replaced and the door set more evenly in its frame.

  SIX

  At four o'clock the following afternoon, having trimmed the bright white sails and — at the last possible minute — having dropped them altogether, Ben Groves brought his sailboat, Salt Joy, into its slot on the graded beach. This section of the shoreline had been especially built up, then sloped to provide an easy landing zone for the dozens of colorful sailboats that plied the waters around Calder. The flattish bottom of Salt Joy, unlike the curved bottoms of some of the other sailboats, slid up the incline with a wet, hissing noise and came finally to rest.

  Ben leaped out seconds before she did, grabbed the front of the small craft and, staggering backwards, pulled it all the way out of the water. His arms bunched with muscle, and sweat stood on his brow.

  “Are you sure I can't help with this?” she asked. She had turned even a more golden brown color, after nearly a whole day in the glare of the sun, in the reflecting bowl of the sea.

  “We brought two cars so you wouldn't have to stay and help,” he said.

  “Still—”

  “Besides, I'm a perfectionist. I'm afraid you wouldn't fold or roll anything to my approval.”

  “I could keep you company anyway,” she said.

  “And have to listen to me cursing the canvas when it won't roll right?” he asked, mockingly incredulous. “I won't have you finding out how perfectly foul I can be.”

  “You're sure?”

  “Positive.”

  They stood quite close. She felt as if, in the shadow that he threw, she would be always protected, watched over, safe. She had not had this strong a feeling of belonging even with her Uncle William.

  “I want you to know,” she said, “That this was the most wonderful day I've had — since I can't remember when.”

  “I hope that's true.”